saw this Europe map’s interpretation in strange maps, one of my fav blogs
- Prussia, made to look like its walrus-bearded ‘Iron Chancellor’ Otto von Bismarck, is haranguing its neighbours: kneeling on Austria, a sleeping soldier in undress; covering the Netherlands with its right hand.
- France, dressed as a fierce zouave soldier, is aiming a bayonet at the heart of the unwieldy Prussian military monster.
- Belgium, too small to be anthropomorphised, is being squeezed between France and Prussia (which would become its familiar, if uncomfortable lot in the First and Second World Wars).
- England is an old woman, struggling with Ireland, her rebellious lapdog on a leash (although it looks more like a small bear); Scotland is the old lady’s mobcap.
- Spain is a rotund senorita, smoking the day away while lying on her back and thus nearly crushing the small Portuguese soldier under her.
- Corsica and Sardinia are joined to show a leprechaun-like figure gleefully mooning the map-reader.
- Italy, possibly made to look like the great national leader Garibaldi, is holding off pressure from Prussia.
- Denmark is a small, swaggering soldier, no doubt hoping to recover Holstein, the territory it lost to Prussia in a war a few years earlier.
- Norway and Sweden are together turned into a ferocious dog.
- Switzerland is a closed cottage.
- Turkey in Europe is “an Oriental crushed by the superincumbent pressure of the other countries”.
- Turkey in Asia is a girl smoking a hookah pipe.
- Russia is a rag-collector in a patched coat, ‘Crimea’ written on the patch sewn on last.